This was the first weekend trip we took on the Harley. I'm kicking myself that we didn't take any pictures of the bike or on the bike. We went to Clervaux, Luxembourg for lunch and for a visit to the WWII museum dedicated to the Battle of the Ardennes, known as the Battle of the Bulge. This small town, set in a steep valley was a key point in the battle. It lies about 30-40 miles from Bastogne. Below is the only known remaining Sherman tank of this particular model. It was disabled basically where is stands, outside the fortress, then repaired and kept as a monument to the soldiers who fought here.
Inside the fortress is a very small museum, just a handful of rooms. However, each room is PACKED with thousands of items, medals, clothing, weapons, letters, etc. It is a great little place that we spent about an hour in and really enjoyed the personal, individual aspect of the place. No motorcycle picture, but Jeff is carrying a helmet and wearing a Harley shirt:
A weekend or two later, we headed to Köln (aka Cologne) Germany, just an hour and a half away to the north of us. First stop was a biergarten for some good beer, schnitzel and Spargel (German giant white asparagus--yumm). Katie was very glamorous looking:
We visited the Gestapo Headquarters in the infamous "EL DE" building. This was a somber and disturbing place. Ironically, during the bombing which completely leveled the entire city, the only two buildings of note still standing were this Nazi hell hole and the cathedral or "Dom." After the war, this became a government office, like a social security office, meaning people had to visit this building each month to pick up pension checks--the same building in which hundreds or maybe thousands of them had, over the 12 year "Reich," been tortured and imprisoned.
This is the prison level, underground. The walls are covered in graffiti, left by prisoners. Some just kept track of days, some wrote their stories, only ending on the day they were hung. Some wrote of loved ones they would never see again. The feeling in the rooms was of horror--a kind of left-over evil, sense of sadness and inexplicable foreboding. Which was surprising, since we hadn't known a lot about the place before arriving and when walking into the basement we had no idea of the details of its past. Still the same, you could FEEL it. You could feel the history of the place, and not in any single way that could be considered good. The cells were just wider than the doors, but about 15-18 feet deep. As many of 30 prisoners would be kept in a room after a large "sweep" or round-up. The room they are looking into below led to a smaller room with a torture table where countless innocent people were mutilated to death for information.
What's the only thing that can bring you back from the very brink of the abyss of human evil? Three words: THE CHOCOLATE MUSEUM. That's right. Oompa Loompas and the whole shebang. Chocolate rabbits, cats, bars and yes...a chocolate fountain with all the chocolate you can eat. Just before we cross the bridge onto the island of chocolate (yes it is actually on an island in the Rhine River for safety of the chocolate):
Here's Jeff and Katie at the fountain. You can't see, but the lady of the fountain, her arm clad in shimmering samite, held aloft an Excalibur-shaped wafer, dipped in chocolate, signifying by divine right, that chocolate was to be your king--and that if you smile and say "Mmmm good" over and over, she will just keep dipping wafers into the fountain of endless happiness and handing them to you.
We watched chocolate candies being made, learned about cocoa production (1/2 the world's cocoa comes from Ivory Coast, Africa), ate chocolate cake and had hot chocolate at the restaurant, and decided to head to the Dom (cathedral) along the wide boardwalk filled with young and old couples, skaters, musicians, etc. For proof that chocolate makes you grow up big and strong, check out Andrew:
And Katie has surpassed her mom in height and strength, too:
When we were taking the last picture of Jena and Katie, this car (or boat?) was masked by their bodies. This guy drove right on by. Talk about weird:
Next we went to the Dom. This is a hard structure to describe. It is huge. That is an understatement. The spires are over 515 feet tall. That's like a 50 story building. For perspective, that's as tall or taller than every building in New Orleans. There is one church in Ulm with a single spire 10 feet taller, but with the 2 spires side by side, this represents the largest facade of any church in the world. The inside is equally large and cavernous, but because it is so large, it appears vacuous, not as decorative as some of the others we've seen. There appears to be a project underway to clean it to its original white color. We will come back to see that! Look carefully. Those are people at the bottom:
Katie got so tired of carrying Jena, Jeff had to carry her:
Ah, another Saturday without the kids. Unfortunately, Germany was having a little rain (that's a joke it rains 90% of the time--the other 10 percent it drizzles). No motorcycling for this trip. We drove the car up to Monschau, Germany, on the Belgian border. It is a nifty town of half-timbered houses, filled with shopping and food. The town is in a steep valley and surrounded by a castle wall and towers on top of the surrounding valley walls. Here's Jena in the square where we found a good bruschetta and smoked meat specialty shop:
This is the Rur river (not the Ruhr--a massive industrial river valley farther north, silly) flowing through town, which provides fresh trout to the multitude of restaurants:
Take a close look at this one! We believe this may be the "Tale of Sir Robin" also known as "The Not-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot." For you people who don't know your Monty Python, Sir Robin is the knight of the round table who is famous for having "nearly fought the dragon of Angnor," for having "nearly stood up to the vicious chicken of Bristol" and for having "personally wet himself at the Battle of Badon Hill." Here, he is nearly fighting the vicious chicken of Bristol (really, click on it, look at the picture, I do not lie):
After remembering the brave Sir Robin, we climbed up to the castle wall ruins to look over the rain soaked roof tops. It really is a little time capsule.
All in all a fun little trip with a cozy dinner and good (Italian) wine, that a little rain couldn't hurt. That's all for this installment of Schönen-Wochenenden!
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