This weekend has been a very different few days from what we've had previously. Not only has the weather got a bit cold and crappy, but I've been here many many times as a kid.

We stayed at my Oma & Opa's house (German for gran & grandad) as well as with one of my mum's childhood friends. Its been awesome. We've been fed and we've been housed, which more than makes up for us perhaps spending a bit more money than necessary for the past week or so. And we've been fed well too. Incredibly well. Dinner has mainly been with Andy & Christina (my mum basically grew up with Andreas). They've made lovely food for us this whole weekend and been incredibly welcoming. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before leaving Braunlage I had to get directions from my mum to get to Oma's. Its been many years since I came here last. We got the train into the city of Minden and then a bus into Oma's town - Lerbeck. Well, I was a bit unsure at first and then I saw the wall to the old kindergarten and knew exactly where to go. The memories have been flooding back. A lot has changed, but its still all basically the same. Almost exactly as I remember it.

Oma was exceptionally happy to see us. As I said, its been a long time. It was nice to get a smile from Opa too. He's very ill these days, but seemed well enough (all things considered). After settling in and taking the old doggy for a quick walk we had to go get ourselves some dinner. Oma likes to go to bed nice and early. So we took ourselves to the supermarket. It was tough. So many weird and wonderful things, it took us an hour just to get to the counter. The dinner wasn't too successful though. Don't think we'll be eating Kartoffel-puffs again. Its like chopped potato that you make into a patty and fry. Bit weird. There's a photo. It looks lovely, but yeah...

The next day, we headed into Minden on the bus. Its a cool little city. Its more of a normal city than anywhere we've been in Germany yet. Not so much of a tourist trap. So just a load of shopping and cafes. Not quite like home but it was nice to be somewhere more down-to-earth. Although the clothes shops there are pretty cool. Heaps of variety. Katie needed a new warm top so we got one and the woman handed us tickets for a free cocktail, which was a nice suprise. So yeah, we found the cocktail bar and ended up standing in the middle of the women's underwear section sipping tropical cocktails.

After that it was straight to the Ice cream cafe. It was a crap rainy day, but that's another one of my old memories from being in Minden. A whole restaurant devoted to making the craziest ice creams ever. Tasty!

Almost everywhere you go in this area, you can always see one of the two big sights. There is the massive TV Tower on one hill and across from that there is the Kaiser Wilhelm Monument. I've taken a few pics of these. The monument especially looks very impressive. Its always looking down on the country and they chop the trees all around it so its always there.

So driving about anywhere is always quite nice. It made getting all the buses more tolerable. And that night, after going to Minden, my mum's oldest friend Andy came to take us to his and his wife's place to stay. They looked after us incredibly well. They fed us up with huge amounts of amazing food and they worked incredibly hard to speak as much English as possible. They did the same the next morning before dropping us off to go see the Wilhelm Monument up close.

Its massive and the view of the surrounding land is awesome. Then it was back to Oma's again. She dug out all the old photo album's and several hours later we said goodbye and went to stay with Andy & Christina again. It was so great of them to bed us up and feed us. Its the most comfortable we've been in qute a long time. Thanks a lot guys.

The whole weekend was great for me. Minden and Lerbeck are a part of my childhood and very close to my heart. It was great to take Katie and show her about the only place I've been to that I've known since I was young. I think she enjoyed it too.

I've finished this entry from our hostel in Dresden. I never knew anything about this place before Andy & Christina told us about it (apart from the factthat we bombed it) and it was never on our route. But its been awesome so far...