James Goes Back to His Roots

Greetings to all our friends and family. Heather Mittelstaedt (a friend of mine from SPU’s grad program) arrived on Wednesday afternoon. She has been staying with a friend of hers from Seattle who is currently living in Paris, France. Heather and I decided before school ended that she should come for a visit since she as already going to be living in Europe for the summer. She has seen many of the sights in Paris and was excited to arrive. Wednesday was mostly a relaxing afternoon. Heather and I walked around Dublin a bit and I showed her some of the interesting spots I’d found close-by. Then, on Thursday, we rode a train up to Howth to check out the hike around the cliffs that I had found several weeks ago. The weather wasn’t fantastic but it wasn’t raining either, so we had a good hike, got some exercise, and then stopped for lunch in a restaurant close to the train station called “The Bloody Stream”. I realize it sounds like a gross name, but the culture here doesn’t seem to mind that there is some gore in their past and they use it sometimes in names like this one to symbolize and remember the bloodshed that is a formidable part of their past. Despite the name, the food was excellent, and we headed back into Dublin at around 2. We did some more walking around and then went back to our apartment to meet Amy before we left to go out for dinner.
One of the managers in Amy’s office here in Dublin decided to have a bit of a social gathering for the employees and spouses. As it turns out, Amy is the only person who wanted to bring along guests and since Heather was here, we gladly brought her with us. At the first place we met up with everyone else, we introduced Heather to everyone. One of the guys who was there is a friend of ours who Amy works with. His name is Arnaud (pronounced loosely: “R-No”) who is from France. He and Heather had a great night of conversation which included some friendly poking back and forth about the difficulties she had had with some of the French people. But Arnaud is not one to let a jab go without retort, and so he defended his homeland admirably wearing only a smile and jabbed back. It was an excellent dinner.
Then on Friday morning, Amy and I got up at around 4am and headed to the airport. We had planned a trip to Germany. As some of you may have guessed by my last name (Wiebe in German is pronounced “veeb-a” with only a very slight pronunciation of the last syllable), I have some German roots and have always been interested in visiting the country of my ancestors. (I will be giving you the correct pronunciation for some of the places we went just so that you get to practice making fun sounds and words.) Amy spent six weeks studying abroad during her undergraduate program and the professor who led that trip (and also performed our wedding ceremony) has some cousins who live outside of Heidelberg, Germany. At the end of the six weeks in England, this professor had invited anyone who wanted to come to go with him and his family and spend another week or so in Germany, where they stayed at his cousin’s house, and had a great time seeing part of the country. Having met these relatives of his before, Amy emailed them a couple of weeks ago to see if there was any possibility that we could stay with them while we were in the country. They very graciously accepted us.
Our flight landed in Frankfurt on Friday morning around 10. We had a few problems locating and procuring our reserved rental car, but after an extra hour of wheeling and dealing, we ended up with our BMW 316d. As some of you may be aware, I have a bit of a love-affair with BMW. I have wanted one for many years and Amy was pleased to let me rent one for the weekend we spent in Germany since this is where they are built and aren’t much more expensive to rent than any of the other cars available. We hit the highway with no problem thanks to the GPS system we had in our car. (Let me tell you, if you are ever in a country where you don’t speak the language and can’t read the street signs, GPS is not only a blessing, it is a must! For those in our audience who aren’t familiar with GPS, it is a computer guided navigational system, or Global Positioning System. You enter an address into the car’s computer and a small TV screen and female’s voice from the console tells you when to turn, how far to drive, and some models can even show you where restaurants, gas stations, and hotels are located along your chosen route.) In any case, it was great. We got out of Frankfurt and made our way to Altlussheim, which is a town of less than 5000 that is twenty minutes outside of Heidelberg, and about an hour and ten minutes from Frankfurt.
The people we were staying with live there. Their names are Peter and Helga. They have a 23 year-old son named Michael who lives with them. Peter is a sales/marketing consultant for a company that deals in mechanical products and parts. Helga works at home right now. Michael has a job as a farmer/harvester on some land just outside their town, owned by another farmer. This week, he was driving a large tractor harvesting carrots. They have a very nice house which was designed and built for them about 15 years ago. It sits on some property that sits about a football-field length from the Rhine River. The Rhine is a large river that helps support shipping throughout the country and is also used for travel by tour and personal boats. There was many large boats on it throughout the course of the weekend. Between their house and the river are some large fields in which corn and wheat grow. When the Rhine floods, which it sometimes does severely, the water can rise and fill these fields coming very close to their house, which sits only about 20 feet above the level of the river during its normal stage.
When we arrived, Helga had prepared lunch for us which consisted of green salad, Lox (salmon), a cooked vegetable casserole, and rice, all served with a sort of gravy. It was an authentic German lunch and it was excellent. Following lunch we took a walk to Helga’s deceased father’s house. His house is just a few blocks from theirs. Peter’s mother now lives there with a female roommate. Helga’s father died last year from some health problems and they have decided to keep the property so that Peter’s mother will have a place to live that is close to them. There is a large garden (approximately 60x60 feet) on this other property which Peter’s mother works in. She grows tomatoes, raspberries, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, dill, onions, garlic, some other herbs, and even some corn, among other things. We had fresh vegetables all weekend. Helga showed us the small cemetery close to where they live where her father is buried. The cemetery was not exactly busy with people, but there were probably at least 10-12 people tending to the areas of flowers which were planted in the earth above the graves. It was very nice there – beautiful gravestones marked with a variety of plants and flowers that are tended regularly by the family of the deceased. We took a short bike ride through the streets and paths running through and around town and Helga showed us which fields her son works in, as well as some of the other points of interest. Peter arrived in the middle of the afternoon. We drove to the nearby city of Speyer (pronounced Shpeya) to see a huge cathedral there. For a city that is as small as Speyer is, this cathedral was enormous. (See picture of Peter, Helga, and Amy for comparison of size.) Also in Speyer this last weekend, they were having “Der Brezelfest” (The Pretzel-Fest). So, after we finished with the cathedral we headed to the festival, which is really more like a fair. There were food-stands, games, rides, several beer gardens (which is as expected in the homeland of beer), and many, many people. The Germans take their celebrating seriously and do it with gusto. We walked around for a couple of hours, looking at the party as well as the partiers. At one point we stopped for a few minutes to watch the victims on a ride that would have made a well-experienced stunt plane pilot sick. It was fun! Then we went home to get some sleep.
The following Morning (Saturday) we got up to a normal German breakfast which consisted of cereal, juice, coffee, yogurt, several kinds of brunchen (bread rolls, pronounced “broonken”), and several different kinds of sliced meats. Helga has some mild health problems and was tired from the night before, so Peter, Amy, and I headed into Heidelberg to take tour of the old part of town and see the famous Heidelberg Castle. The tour was interesting. The tour guide noted that there is only one building that was left standing that was from old times. The rest of the buildings down in the city were burned to the ground by Napoleon, and this one structure remained because it was the only one that had been built of stone. It was a famous hotel – Der Hotel zum Ritter St. Georg. (I don’t know the meaning of the name. The guide didn’t really say.) We also saw an example of the dwellings of a commoner from the 17th century. After our short tour ended, the three of us took a cable car up a rather large hillside to see Heidelberg castle. Heidelberg Castle, along with the city, was first destroyed in 1622. The castle was rebuilt by Karl-Ludwig. The castle was destroyed a second and final time by Napoleon’s troops during the War of Succession, in 1693. It was large as you can see from the pictures.
When we were finished, we then took another cable car-ride continuing up the hillside, sometimes climbing as steep as a 45-degree incline up another mile or so. The car we rode in on this last leg up the hill was built and has been operating since 1897. At the top, we arrived at Konigstuhl, (“Cone-ig-shtool”) which means “The King’s Chair”. I don’t know that this place has any other significance than being a really great view, but it was fantastic nonetheless. We walked up a short path to a building that housed a great restaurant and ate a very late lunch in the sunshine out on a huge terrace overlooking Heidelberg which was now far below our elevation. We were introduced to a great drink called Rädler. It is a type of beer that is made from a light colored beer, usually a pilsner, and is combined with mineralwasser (mineralwater – “mineral-vosser”) and a little bit of lemonade. It is a sweet drink that is served very cold and reminded me a little bit of ginger ale. It was great on a hot sunny day with the schweineschnitzel (a kind of breaded pork cut in gravy: “shvina-shnitsel”) and potatoes we had. It was all really good. We then headed back down the mountainside, walking back through Heidelberg where I picked up several beer steins as souvenirs in an open-air market. We then drove back home to Altlussheim and had coffee and cheesecake with Helga. That evening, Peter, Helga, Michael, Amy and I drove to another small old town called Karlsruhe that had some very old houses in it dating back to 1598 that were still standing and occupied. We then drove back over into Heidelberg to see some fireworks.
Sunday we got up, eating another huge breakfast, and Peter, Helga, Amy, and I went and looked at some fantastic gardens a few miles away called Schloss Schwetzingen (“shlos shvet-singen”) which was an estate that was built about three hundred years ago by a rich baron. It was the size a small town and had statues, several lakes, two temples: one built to the god Apollo, and another to the god Mercury, bath houses, a theater, office builidings, living quarters, flower gardens, a bird sanctuary and much more. It also claimed to have at least one of every type of tree grown anywhere in the world, which is probably an exaggeration, but probably isn’t too far off. Many of the trees had small plaques on the ground in front of them designating their Latin species name. It was an amazing place. We all went back to Altlussheim and went to another festival. This one was being thrown by the town’s fire department in an effort to raise funds for continuing their operations. They were grilling up steaks, a kind of hamburger, bratwurst (You have never had a bratwurst until you’ve had one in Germany. SO GOOD!), and several kinds of beer. They had marching bands playing that came from several of the surrounding towns to help with the festivities as everyone ate.
Amy and I wanted a couple of hours to look around Frankfurt on our way back to the airport so we left around 2:30pm. We got back in our BMW and got out to the Autobahn (which simply means highway) and headed for Frankfurt. I must say, Amy is a brave soul and must really trust my driving skills. Despite the rumors, there are speed limits on parts of the Autobahn. However, in certain parts where a speed limit isn’t posted, you are simply expected to use good judgment. So, we got up to speed, and I then told Amy I needed to test the capability of our car, which up to this point I had not yet been able to do. We fell in behind some other people “testing” their cars and really got moving. I got our car up to 220 km/h, which translates into around 135mph. That was pretty much all I could squeeze out of the 316 model and I was happy to call it a day. It was really cool to be able to drive that fast and even have my wife encouraging me to “hit it hard”. It was a thrill…and it was LEGAL!
Needless to say, we made good time getting back to Frankfurt. The Germany Ironman competition was going on yesterday and we walked through part of the city watching a little of the competition, enjoying some more Radler, and watching the bustle of people. We spent a couple of hours out in the sunshine and then headed for the airport. We made our plane, which as it turned out, left over an hour late, but got back to Dublin last night around 10:30pm. Amy had to turn right around very early this morning and fly back out to Poland for a three-day trip. She is a trooper y’all! Our experience in Germany left us waiting for a time when we can go back and see more of the country. We saw only a very small portion of it and can’t wait to visit again. We had great beer, saw some very old buildings, castles, and towns, spent some time in the culture, and drove a car very fast. All in all, it was an extremely satisfying weekend. Amy’s parents arrive this coming weekend for a ten day trip to see us. Heather is staying with us until next Wednesday and then will return to Paris for a couple of weeks until she flies back to Seattle. I hope you are all doing well. Talk to you next week.