Germany

Jamie and I took our first trip to Germany, which was also our first trip to Europe.  We went to visit Jamie’s good friend Brian who married his sister’s High school foreign exchange student, Eva. They’ve known each other for 15 years, but she’s from Germany and so he took the leap and moved there to be with her 2 1/2 years ago. 

I took a lot more pictures than I realized, so I’ll just show you here the best of the best.

Brian & Eva live in Monchengladbach (don’t worry, I can’t pronounce it either).  After arriving at their house, Brian took us to a corner bakery and butcher shop.  Then we headed to the city center and we had our first German beer and Jamie learned that he likes Alt. Near their house is a community garden which is separated out by plots and the neighboring apartment dwellers take care of their plots.  I was assuming a vegetable garden, but these were much more than that.

This stone is a weather station.  It’s in German, but from what Eva translated it is very tongue in cheek.  For example, if the stone is wet, it is raining; if you can’t see the stone, it is foggy; if the stone has snow in it, it is snowing; etc… you get the picture.

They live close to Dusseldorf and we took a day to walk around and see the city.  They had some of the nicest outside restaurants.  They also had these weird trees that looked like they were upside down.  Jamie and I also had a shot of Killepitsch which tasted quite strong. 

We also visited Cologne (Koln) which I learned from Wikipedia was 95% destroyed in WWII and then rebuilt.  However, there is a cathedral that is still original and so amazing.  They have a very busy shopping street that was packed on Saturday, because all the stores are closed on Sundays.  They are also home to the chocolate museum (yum) where they actually make chocolate and I was able to customize my very own chocolate bar.

We had ice cream (gelato) almost every day and one of the last days we had some fancy ice cream creations. 

We finished our week with dinner at the TV tower in Dusseldorf which has a rotating restaurant with an amazing view of the city.  Unfortunately, it was cloudy, but we still enjoyed the sights and the company of our wonderful friends.

We are so grateful that we were able to take this trip together. Our family was incredibly awesome to take care of the little guy while we were away and knowing he was with them made our trip all the better.  We hope to return again in a few years.