Travel Log II (Regional Excursions)

Posted: Dezember 14th, 2008 | Author: soeren | Filed under: Privat | Tags: Family, Germany, Intercultural, Travel | No Comments »

Just by chance I attracted a readership >0 on the topic of showing the parents-in-law (PIL) central europe. So “hi” to everybody. I am particularly sorry that I was not able to hold up the promise of “live blogging” during the trip – our schedule was too full to do that. The wife attempted to “future blog” the whole trip during our absence, so if you feel like it, you can compare the planed trip from the actual one.

To provide a complete overview of the travels I will also give a short update about the three days that my parents acted as tour guides instead of us:

Day 3 (December 1st)

Monday started with a quick tour of Dortmund. Downtown, the university, the football stadium… just to get a feel for the city. I would assume that they observed how the structure of a European town is different from the average American one: Different way of mixing commercial and housing zones, street layouts, styles of houses and such.

The main act, though, was definitely the birthday of my grandpa (for the remote chance that he will ever use a computer, let alone, browse the net: Happy Birthday!), he turned 79. The main attraction of this visit of course is, how my Opa and Oma represent the institution of (German) grandparentness. The whole package of having actually hand-made several cakes for just a handful of visitors, shoving it on your plate whether or not you like it, reciting stories about your relatives that you have heard about 500 times as if they just happened yesterday, and so on.

But, so I heard, everybody got along just great and loved it.

Day 4

On tuesday, Aachen was scheduled: Particularly old stones with actual historic relevance. The Aachen Cathedral, built by Charlemagne (Karl der Große) and the surrounding downtown. The Chapel was part of Charlemagne’s palace, which was mostly destroyed, meaning that the chapel is around since about 800 AD. Naturally, the dome was the main attraction for the day. Second best, and very impressive due to its high level of “bling bling” is the Cathedral’s treasury, where some important reliquaries and other religious items are kept. The sheer amount of gold and diamonds is particularly impressive, even when the bones that are inside the reliquaries are a bit spooky.

Aachen itself is not very pretty (to me at least), at lot of 1960 / 70s buildings, but the little historic downtown around the dome looks very medieval, even for German standards of historic downtowns. As it happens, all the shops for “Aachener Printen” (particular type of ginger bread) can be found there, which of course was exploited by the PIL as a chance to buy some souvenirs.

Day 5

The third of their regional tours took all the parents to Münster, best known for being the place where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed and its huge amounts of bicycles. Most of the historic houses in the historic center (Prinzipalmarkt) have a stepped gable, the houses are build out of sand stone. This gives the town a much more “approachable” feel, then the dark, stuffy downtown of, say, Aachen.

At night, the wife took her parents to a Spanish Tapas Bar “Taberna Andaluza” in Dortmund. It is basically a meeting place for Spaniards / Germans with a spanish background. Dortmund, as many of the Ruhr Area towns has a large immigrant population of spanish, turkish, italian, greek and other immigrants as a result of work migration programs in the 1950s and 1960s to take low-skilled jobs in the mining and steel industry. Since those days, close knit communities exits in the town and with them their a bit of their home culture. In this particular case, the result is inexpensive, excellent spanish food.

Day 6

On the last day of regional excursions I took my parents in law to Cologne and Düsseldorf. Cologne, obviously has the Cologne Cathedral, an obvious tourist magnet, an prime example of gothic architecture and one of the largest cathedrals in the world. Building started 1248, that is over 400 years later than the Cathedral in Aachen, nevertheless impressive. Cologne was a Roman settlement since 50 AD. Under much of the current downtown (around the Cathedral) remains of the roman times are to be found. The Romano-Germanic Museum hosts a multitude of the more interesting finds of this time. Since we decided to climb the stairs of the south-tower of the cathedral, we had no time to visit it.

Düsseldorf, which is the state capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, has also some history to offer, but at that afternoon, the interest was mostly shopping. The best known and most important street for shopping in Düsseldorf is the “Kö” (Königsallee). The Kö is a well known and one the more expensive shopping areas in Germany. For us that meant mostly window shopping and finding more common stores nearby. Düsseldorf has also a large population of Japanese, as a lot of Japanese companies have their European headquarters or at least important branch offices in Düsseldorf. For dinner we decided to treat our guests to eat at one of the better sushi restaurants in town, called “KiKaKu“.

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