Sept 15, 2009 – Meldorf, Germany

Herbert was kind enough to take a day off work to continue our tour of the Meldorf area.  This picture is from Husum, the seat of the regional government and and a centre for shopping in the area.  There is nothing about this photo that places it in Husum, but I liked it just the same.

As if we needed proof, cities in Europe have been around a long time and buildings often capture the date they were built as part of their construction.  As the following picture shows, this building in Tonning (map link), was apparently built in 1666.

Another picture from Tonning showing an early container port.  The big building in the background was a warehouse that stored a variety of cargoes brought by ships that docked on the shipping canal in the foreground to unload.

Herbert’s tour also included a stop at Friedrichstadt, a small town with a 400-year history dating back to 1621 when it was established as a home for victims of religious persecution from Holland.  The tourism sites refer to it as the “Venice of the North”, dotted with lots of pretty gabled houses and romantic canals, just like in Amsterdam.

Here a couple of views of the waterways around Friedrichstadt and a view of part of the system of canals that cut through the town.

 

 

Sept 14, 2009 – Meldorf, Germany (2)

In addition to the dikes, the governments of this part of Germany have some other types of civil engineering projects to keep the sea separate from the land.  The water in the following picture is the Eider River.  On the other side of the big ‘curtains’ is the North Sea that mediate the flow of water between the Eider and the North Sea.  There are another set of these on the North Sea  side.

This diagram, from an information booth that was part of complex.  Shows how these curtains can move up and down to allow water from  the Eider to the North Sea, vice versa, or not allow flow in either direction.

As part of this day’s sightseeing, we went for a long walk to a regional park that included this lighthouse and an interesting interpretative program.  We asked a fellow traveler to take this picture so we could get a picture of the entire group.

From left to right (standing) Kirstin, Laura-Lyn, Charlotte, Allan, Allister, Herbert, Jasper, Hardy.  From left to right (kneeling) Ute and Stine.

Sept 14, 2009 – Meldorf, Germany

Herbert is very proud of this area of Germany and, having lived there most of his life, knows every road. 

The Michaelson’s (Ute in particular) have nicknamed me the ‘grillmeister’ because it seems to them (probably correctly) that every family gathering they have attended in Canada has included me grilling meat.  After our stay in Meldorf, we decided that Herbert has earned the nickname ‘tourmeister’ for his work as a tour guide for our visit to all the sights in this part of Germany.

Here is an example.  We stopped and had a picnic on a dike and walked out onto the North Sea tidal flat.  It took a long walk to reach water.

Our picnic site was on a dike that kept the North Sea and off the land.  These dikes were used for many things including picnics and grazing sheep.  On the right side of the photo is the North Sea, on the left Schleswig-Holstein. In the distance, although not discernible in this photo, there were flocks of sheep grazing on this grass and separated from other users of the dike by a system of portable fences.  More on these devices perched on the dike below.

Since the wind blows frequently in this part of Germany, beach-goers have evolved some structures to help make a trip to the beach more enjoyable.

Laura-Lyn is modeling a Strandkorb (for more details see Strandkorb at German beach) that can be positioned to shield one or two people for the prevailing and provide a comfortable seat.  Depending on the popularity of the beach, there are more or less of these devices.

If you needed more proof that the wind blows quite a bit in this part of the Germany, check out the photo below.  Electricity generating windmills is a growing industry in this part of the country with a number of startup firms producing and supporting these devices and exporting their products, skills, and know-how throughout the world.

This is only a small sample.  In this region, there are many views like these.

This thatched roof house was on the backside of the North Sea dike where we had our picnic.  We walked down the slope, through a flock of sheep, used two conveniently located blocks of wood to step over the fence.  Charlotte bought a very plush set of sheep skin slippers from the shop located in this cottage.

Sept 12 – 16, 2009 – Meldorf, Germany

Meldorf, and as we would later learn, is like much of Germany and very bicycle-friendly.  We explored much of Meldorf on our first day on bicycles, including attendance at Jasper’s soccer game.  Part of the bicycle trip required a stop at our host’s favourite ice cream place.

At this place they served something called ice cream spaghetti topped with strawberry sauce and other goodies.  The ’spaghetti’ is formed by extruding the ice cream through a device that turns vanilla ice cream into something that looks this the following picture.

Another Meldorf site captured on the bike tour (which we needed after the spaghetti ice cream treat).

Sept 13, 2009 – Meldorf, Germany

Charles Grooms’ wife, Inga, came to Canada from Meldorf.  Her parent’s, Herbert and Ute, still live there as does her sister Kirstin and her family which includes Kirstin’s husband, Hardy, son Jesper, and daughter Stine.

Meldorf is in Northern Germany, near the North Sea as the pushpin on the map below shows.  As Herbert pointed out, there is a connection between  BC and this part of Schleswig-Holstein – the 3 new BC Ferries ships were built in Flensburg, which the map shows north of Meldorf.

Practically all of Inga’s Meldorf family has, on multiple occasions, visited Canada so we have all met and spent time together previously.  They were wonderful hosts and spent our four day visit showing us Meldorf and their area and making us feel very welcome

They also confided that although we had told them of our plans to visit them on our European trip, they hadn’t really taken us seriously but were very pleased when we turned up on Herbert and Ute’s doorstep as scheduled.

Sept 12, 2008 – Frankfurt to Meldorf, Germany

Today is a travel day.  From Frankfurt to Meldorf, in northern Germany, near the North Sea.  It was a Friday afternoon, there was construction, and what should have been a 5 hour trip turned into an 8 hour trip.

Some of the monotony of driving in heavy traffic was broken by our first glimpse of an electricity generating windmill (this picture taken by Allister through the sunroof of Jean-Pierre, our leased Peugeot 407 car).