Travel Log I

Posted: Dezember 1st, 2008 | Author: soeren | Filed under: Privat | Tags: Family, Germany, Intercultural, Travel | 3 Comments »

First days of the parents in law (PIL) in Germany. As expected, they are pretty overwhelmed by the fact that almost everything is at least slightly different than at home. This is what I enjoy most, when international visitors come by, to see the whole situation through their eyes and share the amazement of the exoticness of places that I usually hardly experience with full awareness. So instead of just giving a generic travel overview I will try to overlay their perspective with mine and talk about the perceived and real differences, large and small. Also, even at the first day I ran into situations where I could not answer the most basic and legit questions about stuff that just appears to everyday and familiar to really think about it – I guess the same display of not-knowing that would happen with a kid.

(Disclaimer: All this according to my observation and interpretation of the reactions of my PIL, also, they are to easy-going and polite to point out what they do not like or find questionable, repulsive, ugly, … In these cases I just have to guess).

So here we go:

Day 1

On Saturday we picked them up at Düsseldorf International. 40 minutes late due to traffic jams on the A40 we worried that they would get or at least feel lost. “Luckily” the checked-in luggage got lost when connecting in the Netherlands, which took some time to fix in Düsseldorf.

• Observation 1 (downer): The “Autobahn” is not so amazingly different from a interstate in a metropolitan area.
• Observation 2 (just different): The makes of models is different, the amount of pick-ups is amazingly low.

At home, we got settled and showed them around

• Observation (amazement): Roofs are covered with pan tiles, sometimes with slate.
• Observation (pleasing the hosts): Our cats are cute (well, we know that, but still)

The day ended with an obligatory visit of the Weihnachtsmarkt in Dortmund, which I guess is weird for everybody including me: Tons of people squeeze through little alleyways of card box houses, buying stuff that you can’t get sold on the Home Shopping Channel, but is miraculously attractive because it is offered on the Weihnachtsmarkt. Anyway: The amount of people and impressions together with the amount of oil in the Reibekuchen tired them out pretty quickly and they were glad to get into their new home and into their bed.

Day 2

The Sunday started (after everybody slept in) with a giant lunch at my parents. As German as it gets. Then we showed them the local forest, partly to actually see the local fauna, partly to work ourselves out of the post-lunch coma.

• Question (Testing the host): What is the “generic” tree that constitutes the forrest round here? Well, cough, its one with leafs, right? Wikipedia tells me that it must be “Buche” (Beech) and “Eiche” (Oak).
• Observation (not unexpected, still amazing): Having so many trees around you basically everywhere is sure different from the plains in Oklahoma.

We completed the day by showing them nearby Hattingen, which has a nice little, well preserved medieval downtown. Of course there was also a Weihnachtsmarkt to be visited, but given the small size and the actually nice setting it was enjoyable.

• Lost in Translation: “Fachwerkhaus” (the houses with the many black beams and the white fillings) is called “timbered” or “half-timbered” house. Sure doesn’t evoke any picture until you show it…
• Observation (Inducing amazement): Some of the houses were built when Columbus was sailing to “discover” America.
• Observation (different, at least for everything but New England): There is an overwhelming amount of dedicated church buildings (i.e. stone churches)

The local food attraction there is the “Pancake House”, where, you would have guessed it, pancakes are served. While the pancakes there were sure “German” in their basic recipe and the fact that they were eaten as a dinner (hearty, not sweet), the whole idea of putting toppings on them in a pizza fashion is not necessarily everyday German cuisine. It was nevertheless good, and the beer selection certainly was representative.

The next few days, my parents will take care of them and show them around in NRW. I probably won’t blog about that and will continue with our trip to Munich.

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