LZ 129

Well, dear readers. It’s probably time to tell you about our fellow travelers aboard the LZ129 Hindenburg. 

There are 33 paying customers, including the two of us.

A bunch of family groups are from the US. 

A family of 8 from Texas. Grandma and Grandad were here decades ago, and their two sons were apparently born here. One son has a wife, born in India but raised in the US. The other son has a wife and 2 kids, one just a teen and one almost. Grandad has brought all of them to Germany to experience his nostalgia.

A family of 6 from Kentucky. Once again, grandad is shouting the family a trip to visit his past. This time it’s his wife, son, daughter in law and 2 teen grandsons along for the ride down memory lane.

One family of 4 is from Salt Lake City, which probably makes them Mormon. There’s a guy, who Sarah calls Arnie, who’s traveling with his mother and her sister and brother in law. On day one, Arnie made a point of saying that sister wives and polygamy are not a thing back home. The laddie doth protest too much, methinks. I did notice that the brother-in-law bears a striking resemblance to Sean Hannity of Fox News. I decided that it was politically expedient not to mention this observation. Amrikans in the wild tend to be unlikely to admit publicly that they either like Trump or watch Fox. So much for the so called ‘right-wing’ being the ones who don’t tolerate dissenting opinions. Which side invented ‘cancel culture’ again? Which side tried to bankrupt, vilify and imprison their opposition leader? But let’s get back to roll call.

There is a family of 3 from Florida. The son is in his 20’s, and doesn’t appear to have spent much time outside of his mother’s basement. With the possible exception of time at the gun range. Somebody who never achieved the personality of a school shooter. 

An older couple from Arizona. She is one of those people who think that the world would benefit from her perpetual narration. I just do it in my head. Mostly.

There’s a single guy from the US military. He’s about to start a posting in Germany, so joined this tour to fill in the time before he reports.

There is an Indonesian mum and daughter from Sydney 

A couple of ladies from Sydney 

An Asian lady from Vancouver.

A guy from Ireland, who always seems to be last on the bus. With the occasional exception of…

A lady with a sunflower lanyard who is quite intense, and who unsurprisingly starts to fray a little when something unexpected happens. She seems to have done nonstop tours, but I’m not sure that she should be unaccompanied going forward. She seems to require the disproportionate attention of the tour guide very regularly. I’ll call her Thelsea. Dr Grinch has diagnosed her as having asbergers. She has what appears to be quite a good camera, and seems to take random photos of things. A lot. She panics when her camera batteries go flat, or her SD card is full. It looks like her camera takes rechargeable AA batteries, because she is often seen with one of those 4-pack AA chargers in hand, looking for somewhere to plug in.

She has a surprisingly encyclopedic knowledge of music, and can always name the song, artist and year of release when the tour leader decides to throw some elevator music onto the bus sound system. Colour me impressed.

And then there’s the ringleader or cat herder himself, Rob, from London. I think he’s gay, but it’s one of those indeterminate ‘who cares’ situations. It’s nice that we still have people like that,  for whom their sexuality is not the be all and end all of their identity. 

I miss the old days of ‘don’t know don’t cares’, where we didn’t have to celebrate every little thing that makes someone special. Special. In the Olympics context, perhaps. 

Rob is one of those people who seems to have no bum. As a consequence, his pants are always dragging like a ‘90s skater. Luckily we have been spared the branded underwear wasteband, towering over empty belt loops. 

There are many of us who have the opposite problem. Depending on the cut of the trousers, a belt can become redundant. On the fuller figure, tighter or stretchier trousers run the risk of rolling off like a condom at the most inopportune time. That’s why god invented suspenders. What a genius idea. 

I’m hoping that our new uniform at work will include the option of suspenders. The theme seems to be a retro one, so button-on suspenders would be a perfect style fit.

But who listens to me?

 

Wag the Dog

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth mentioning again.

All my life I have been severely prone to car sickness. Spend more than a few minutes as a passenger in a car, and there was a fairly good chance of being reintroduced to my last meal.

A few years ago, I had something of an epiphany. I call it wag the dog, and here’s how it works:

• When you get motion sickness, you start to feel crappy and the taste in your mouth gets worse.  
• If you change the taste in your mouth before it starts, you seem to be able to stop all of the other symptoms.

So that’s it in a nutshell, and it seems to work. Just to be safe, I made sure that the taste in my mouth took attention away from anything else going on. To achieve this, I found the strongest mints I could. 

Early on in the piece, I made a rookie mistake. I foolishly thought that I needed to keep my brain constantly focused on the taste, so I would pop them regularly during a trip. As I acclimatized to the strength of the mint, I needed a more frequent’hit’ to keep the brain’s attention. Before long, I would go through a tin of mints in an hour-long bus ride. FYI these mints are not a drug, but the behavior has parallels.

This reminds me of a drive I did from Christchurch to I think Cheviot, yeats ago, when my daughter was very young. She brought a friend along because they were doing the 40-hr famine together. That’s where they don’t eat anything for 40-hrs, and raise funds and awareness for World Vision. Since then, the Wokerati have taken over, and rebranded it as the 40-hr challenge, where people try to do without a convenience for up to 40-hrs.

Anyway, back then it was the serious business of no eating, but the contestants could suck on a Barley Sugar lolly occasionally for energy, to stop them fainting all over the place at inconvenient times and places.

So the girls in the back seat were armed with a box of Barley Sugars, and managed to polish them off by the time we’d done the one hour and change drive to Cheviot.

I was like that with my mints.

I have since realised that I can now make a tin last for days. I’m halfway through this tour, and barely half the tin used.

And Jo probably hasn’t had a Barley Sugar since.

Go figure.

Nuremberg

On our way to Nuremberg, we stopped at a little village called Mödlareuth. Its claim to fame was that it straddled the line between East and West Germany. So there was a wall through the middle. It became known as Little Berlin. 

Moving on, tell a young kiwi that we were in Nuremberg today, and the best you could hope for is that they ask if we saw Haydon Paddon. 

As whimsical or as irreverent as that idea might sound, it’s already been done. Every year there is a race held on a street circuit laid out on the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds.

But seriously...

Had a look around the Old Town square. Found this rather revealing sculpture. As is often the case with public placement, protruding bits tend to get rubbed and become shiny.

Like all these old cities, lots of beautiful buildings, ancient or otherwise.

Asian Prayers for Tik

 Here's a couple of healthy meals in Dresden.

Is this where the American Hotdog came from?

Or is this where it ended up?

By the way, we're not in a rat house. I got hungry.

A great Italian restaurant only about 600m from our hotel, a little pasta.

Dresden

Took a drive to the city that became famous outside Germany for getting the shit kicked out of it during WW2.

While that remains true, for those who come here, there is so much more.

There's a bunch of history with assorted kings, Dukes and other royalty, just like every other part of Germany, and probably Europe.

There is an amazing part of town, some of it in what is allegedly the Baroque style, that was built many centuries ago. 

Luckily (if that's even a word that you can apply to Dresden), this was all rebuilt from 1945.

And then I saw a guy torturing a tortoise. Or is it a turtle? Do you know the difference?

I don't even know if this is legal in most countries.

 

Before we left Dresden, we noticed a building with an uncanny association with Sarah

The whole building was themed to a little airline nobody here has heard of.

Our final excursion in this building found a cheese shop.

Which started me thinking...

If a person, or a family, had no other food, how long would one of these wheels last? 

I expect it wouldn't be the most balanced diet, though, would it?

East meets West

 There's a lot about Berlin that tells the story of East and West Germany.

Think of Germany. Cut it in half, to create East and West.

Now think of the capital, Berlin, which happens to be in the East side. Regardless, cut it in half to create East and West Berlin.

As we approached Berlin, the commentary leaned into the rise and fall of Hitler, Nazis and the Third Reich. Then there were the various iterations of both Germany over the centuries, as well as the assorted walls and curtains involved. This really does sound like a decorating job that might appeal to an alleged paperhanger. Just sayin'...

We saw buildings young and old, some young pretending to be old, and some particularly brutalist in their communist style.

Ticked off all of the usual suspects:

• Brandenburg Gate
• Riechstag
• Museum Island
• Checkpoint Charlie
• The Berlin Wall Memorial
• The Berlin TV Tower

Now that is really a blast from the past.

During the 60's, many countries were trying to show their engineering superiority by building the tallest tower in the world. It was like a phalic one-upmanship between opponents. This was particularly true between East and West. The Berlin TV tower was built with the intention of being taller than anything the West had built to date. Taller than the Eiffel Tower, it was shorter only than one built in St Petersburg by their glorious overlords.    

It was made taller some years later by adding additional anten
na, allegedly because somebody got their lederhosen in a bunch when they heard another tower was about to be taller.

Then there are the memorials. A large one was built to commemorate the jews killed by the Nazis. It's a collection of irregular height granite blocks.

Then the homosexuals got out of the wrong side of the bed because they were also on the Nazi's naughty list. So one was built for them across the road.

Then the lesbians kicked off, so the gay memorial now alternates between male and female themes.

Watch this space for the trans, the intersex, the queers and the bi's, the andros and the pans, the demis, the MAPs and the furries to come out of the woodwork to claim their designated victimhood status.

Oy Vey!

Went to see Fredrick the Great's Royal Summer Palace in a place called Sanssouci, outside Berlin.

Then had dinner at an old Hunting Lodge called Wirtshaus Moorlake.

Lubly Jubly.

By the way... I saw this in one of the many plazas / squares / pedestrian malls / whatever you want to call them.

Is this device more of a metaphor for an office or a family? Everybody peddling madly away in no particular direction, while only one person controls the steering wheel.

Asking for a friend...

Off to Berlin

And away we go again.

Driving the last few days was like navigating in England. Lots of isolated roads with bush down both sides, so it feels like you'r cutting a path through a forest. There is probably a village, town or city 150m to your left, but you would never know. Occasionally the road we are on meets with others, sometimes branching off with the party sign, sometimes going over or under another equally large road. Still no sense of where we are.

Don't know if I mentioned this, but it seems like the famous autobahns of germany are a myth. More like an autobahn lane. Same again today. Zooming past on the inside lane, while normal people stay in the other lanes. I think there is a speed limit for trucks and buses of 100km/h.

Another strange thing is that Trucks are not allowed on the roads on a Sunday. Unless they are carrying urgent supplies. While that makes for a deceptively easy drive on a Sunday, it must add cost and complexity to the supply chain. Trucks parked up at truck stops all along the motorways, so the drivers are being paid to entertain themselves for 24-hrs.

Today the terrain is different. Lots of corn fields, then lots of windmills, and then lots of solar panels.

And lots of road works. In the cities and on the motorways. Just like at home, they choose the most inconvenient time to do all of this work, probably at the end of the financial year, so that they can blow their budget with unfinished work, so that they can justify a bigger budget next year. Standard bureaucratic playbook.

Here's an observation: Why do they always put out a "ROAD WORKS" sign out, when it doesn't? They never put it out when the road is working perfectly well!!!

Another observation. Quite often we see this type of sign on the road.

Not once have we seen a dancing deer. Not even once. Disappointment doesn't begin to describe it. 

Talk about over-promising...

Hamburg

 One thing we have noticed since Frankfurt, is that there is a lot of pedestrian space. Squares, malls, arcades, lots of areas where vehicular transport is verboten.

One such place is around the Town Hall in Hamburg. The council chambers.

And no, we did not fail to notice how damned impressive this building is.

It's called The Rathuis. Given what we know about many mayors and councillors, it's not funny at all.

Nearby we saw a very colourful store called Pylones.

Very cute. Don't mock, just look at these...

A glass cheeseboard painted like an artist's palette, and a cheese knife that looks like a brush.

Sarah was looking for a fan for the expected hot days. This one will dispatch curious bees, too.

This toothbrush and holder would be adored by my number 6 grandchild.

And no, Grandad Grinch did NOT get it for her.

Just one more thing. I saw this on the pavement. A sly nod to Richard and Oscar.

Or perhaps to Liverpool FC

Ha Ha

Bon Ami

 Here's a thing around Europe, so we had better get used to it.

You pay 1 euro to go to a public bathroom. This is usually paid at a vending machine next to the turnstile into the bathroom.

The receipt you get from the machine is called a bon.  Often it gives you a discount of equivalent value at the establishment. The one I got where we stopped for lunch gives a 1 euro discount for a coffee. 

So they encourage you to consume more liquid, so that you will spend another euro at the next bathroom. The ultimate perpetual motion machine or the circle of life? 

Probably neither, but it’s a great business model.

I just need to ask why it has an expiry date of 31-12-28. That just makes no sense.

Heading to Hamburg

Today is a bit of a drive, so we will stop for a pitstop, and then again for lunch, before we get there.

I did notice something along the motorway. We all hear about the famous Autobahn, but without checking, it appears to me that there is an Autobahn lane. 

It may be different on the big roads, but there were primarily 3-lanes, so that big to me.

The outside lane is for the slow pokes, the middle of the road is just that. And the centre-most lane is for those wanting to show off their German sports cars.

Something else i noticed a lot. This sign.

Despite the natural assumption that this is something Australians do, it's not.

It's actually much more pedestrian than that. It just means exit, or in this case motorway exit.

Ah, Well.

Heading to Cologne

 On the bus at 0755, and we hit the road. 

Stop at a small village called Rüdesheim am Rhein

It’s apparently famous for Christmas markets. We’re a few months early for that. Very cute, though. Another time, perhaps.

On the road again, following the Rhine. 

Recently we did a whistle stop in Apia. The drive from the airport to the main town (city?) was punctuated by a church every few hundred metres.

Same here. Blink and here comes another castle or a church. Often both. All the way down the Rhine. At least 40 castles and over 270 churches within sight of the river.

From a place called Sankt Goarshausen we catch a boat for a wee jaunt up the river.

Nearby is a statue for a woman called Loreley, who apparently threw herself off a cliff into the river, rather than be sent to a convent.

When we get off at Kamp Bornhofen, then it’s onto a smaller coach to head up the hill to an old castle for lunch

It’s called Burg Liebenstein, and has amazing views of the river and village below.

After lunch we carry on to Köln, or Cologne to us. 

First stop is the Cologne Cathedral. Impressive. Sarah lit a couple of candles for her parents. 

We had some free time, so decided to look around the neighborhood instead of wandering further afield like the others. 

I happened upon a shop selling t-dhirts that appealed. Pity it was a Sunay is all I can say.

We ended up at a place called Five Guys, a kind of wanna be McDonald’s. We decided to have a large fries, to tide us over until we did dinner tonight. 

First shock: 8.95 euros for a large fries!! Do the math, people!!!

Second shock: A medium drink-sized paper cup full of fries AND the same amount poured onto the tray.

Holy shitballs, that’s a lot of potatoes!!

Before we can leave Five Guys to meet the group again, the heavens open. I had to wonder if this was some kind of payback for using up two candles at a Catholic cathedral. Perhaps...