Episode 3
Wilf and Gabi made us very welcome, as they always do, and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay with them in their home. It did rain much of the time.Wilf often travels to China amongst other places on business and he told us that when his Chinese colleagues come to Germany they buy many ‘brand’ name products to take back to China with them, not only top brand names, but also the lesser but well regarded names. The reason for this is that they can be sure they are not buying a fake. In China there are just so many fakes around that the locals who value their money avoid everything. Only stupid foreigners with more money than sense buy them.On Monday morning with the weather looking somewhat brighter and when they both headed off to work we too our leave and headed in the general direction of north. My lot have decided that the area where Gabi and Wilf come from in the Hartz mountains region should be an interesting area to head for en route to Denmark.L set up Gertie (the sat-nav) to avoid motorways (autobahns in Germany) and off we went. We wended our way through rolling green hills with great splashes of bright yellow where the rape (canola) is in full bloom and where after the rain, the perfume of it was strong in the air. Quite a pleasant smell, it could be somewhat of an irritant for those who suffer with hay fever we suspect. Passed through many villages both large and small, most quite busy after the weekend. Plenty of farmers out and about on their tractors nearly all on the roads, none in the fields where one would normally expect to see a tractor.Everywhere there are roofs both large and small covered with solar panels, saw a few small solar farms and some wind turbines, one or two having a ‘rostered’ day off by the looks of it. L always says that this profusion of solar panels puts Australia to shame, after all we have the best climate in the world for creating solar energy and we harness almost none of it.One especially interesting place that we came across is Rothenburg ob der Taube. A lovely old town surrounded by a bastion wall, most of which dates for the late 14th century. It is a tourist town of course and there were plenty of them about but nothing compared with what it will be like come July and August.It came out hot and sunny as we strolled around this town. L was wishing she had changed into her shorts as just a few other had done. I did a lot of posing here and there at places of interest and with ‘friends’ I made as we went around. It seems that there is quite a fetish for teddy bears in this town with many a shop window displaying vast numbers of them, and they came in all sizes too, but none at all like me. I’m a one off. The buildings here are very pretty, and well cared for. The Germans call them frame houses or half tempered houses and they very much resemble the English ‘tudor’ style. They probably date from the same era. Some of the town was damaged and destroyed by bombing near the end of WW2, however it has been well restored and it’s difficult to tell what’s original and what’s not. Another large town we visited is Weimar. This is a town famous for its culture, a bit lost on my lot, i’d say, but none the less we had a look around. Goethe and Schiller, the great poets both come from here, and musician such as J S Back and Strauss, called the place home too. There weren't a great number of tourists about and the pace of life here seems quite leisurely so we all enjoyed a stroll around taking in the sites. There are some Palaces along the river Ilm however, my lot had trouble working out just which was which, the map in the guid book bearing little relationship to the actual site, or so it seemed.My lot did consider joining a walking tour but couldn’t find one in English so gave that idea a miss too. Still we had a good look around and enjoyed our visit.We passed through the Harz mountains and came into Quedlinburg. This is the city that Wilf comes from and is now a World Heritage Site. It is certainly a well preserved old city with narrow street after narrow street lined with frame or half timber houses. Just here and there a modern glass structure has taken form and one wonders how come the powers that be have let it happen. These modern steel and glass structures appear so at odds with the surrounding buildings.There are a great number of churches in the town but the large on one top of the hill seems to dominate the skyline. It was from Quedlinburg that Henry the Fowler and his wife Mathilda ruled in the early part of the 10th century. After his death Mathilda established a collegiate of aristocratic women who ruled the area until the Napoleonic era. The women having the upper hand, L likes the sound of that.We did thoroughly enjoy our time spent here taking in the sites and the atmosphere. Again there were only a few tourists so the pace was leisurely. It seems that either we are early enough in the season to avoid the tourist hords or they have yet to discover these gems. This is the former East Germany and it is less developed than what was West Germany, the industry here was almost all shut down when the ‘Wall’ came down and Germany re-united. That left vast unemployment in most of the former Eastern sector that has yet to recover. It also had its good point in that the lovely old cities such as Quedlinburg were left mostly intact, if somewhat crumbling, unlike in the west where many were swiftly replaced with modern structures. Everywhere we travel we see many tourists on bicycles loaded up to the hilt peddling up and down the hilliest of regions, L would love to be able to do that. Of course there are lots of motorbikes likewise loaded but the energy level needed for them is somewhat less than for a bicycle. Quite a number of motorhomes beginning to get about too now that summer is on its way again.We continued north towards Denmark and our rendezvous with Iceland ferry from Hirtschals in the far north of that country. along the way we kept to minor roads and passed through a never ending succession of small and not so small villages. We had some sunny spells and a couple of very hot days then some showery weather came and it got much cooler.It was raining when we arrived at the ferry terminal and continued to do so for most of the trip to Iceland. The sun might appear for a few hours in a morning but by afternoon it seems to have given up for the day, then it would try again the next day. On our first morning out we saw a couple of oil platforms out in the north sea, and the following morning we docked in Torshavn in the Faroe Islands before 5am and spent several hours here.My lot, with me too, headed out for a look about this small town that is the major city of these Islands. If there is a business centre then we didn’t find it. It all seemed to be a bit haphazard and scattered with a tourist info office in one place a bank a few blocks away, numerous pizza shops, a smattering of hotels, one of them with a coffee shop/restaurant and a few other shops spread hither and yon.Some turf roofed building facing the harbour on one side and a lighthouse on the headland on the other side with thousands of boats of all sizes crambed together in the harbour in between. Must be a boat for almost every family judging by the number of them. At the light house we read that the fist fort was built in the Islands in the 15th century and the one where this lighthouse now stands was first built in the 17th century to help protect the islanders trading from Turkish pirates. Those Turkish pirates would have been a bit far from home one would have thought.Our ferry is quite large and although it’s not full with vehicles there is one hell of a lot of them on it. Quite a lot of new vehicles heading out to Iceland too: there is a good crowd of passengers too, several coach loads heading to Iceland to do tours, all of them seem to be either German or Scandinavian. We have heard some other English speakers but no-one seems very friendly so we haven’t really got talking to anyone, though I, with my good looks and friendly smile have evoked a few smiles when I sit out in the lounge. With the weather not very cheery and no internet D seems much more inclined to lie in our cabin and watch the TV while and L and I sit in the public area while she reads and I just smile.
© Lynette Regan 11th may 2015