Goslar, Saxony -Anhalt, Germany

We caught a train to Goslar to look at this pretty town which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. The town was founded in 922 and 100 years later became an Imperial City and one of the most important seats of power in the Holy Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages it was a centre of faith with 47 churches, monasteries and chapels.

Legend has it that the Knight Ramm's horse scratched the earth with his hoof to reveal a vein of silver ore. The city treasury in the main square houses the carillon bells and at 12 o'clock figurines emerged to show the legend and history of silver mining in the town.

A short walk from the market place was the Imperial Palace with Heinrich 111's tomb nearby.

Snow!

There was a good tourist office with maps with 3 different city walks so we could see the Sieman family home,

the town hall and its interesting roof, as well as the colourful bell caster's house, and other fine buildings.

Back in Bissendorf.

Ilona teaches two boys English so we helped them and showed them some books on New Zealand while eating cake and drinking tea.

Heinrich and Kiel

Luneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany

Lower Saxony is well known for its half-timbered houses. It is also the province where you can find the town of Hamelin from the story of the Pied Piper. As we had already visited Hamelin we decided to take a trip to Luneburg.

Luneburg is also known as the Wobbly Town. The church steeple is crocked and many of the buildings lean into each other or bulge out like they are about to burst.

For many centuries until 1980, the town was mining salt. The ground subsidence and shifts has from the mines has left the town looking like a comic book town.

The main square was busy with people visiting the Christmas Market. We stopped to warm up with hot chocolate and childrens' punch.

The streets were busy with shoppers and sightseers as it was a fine day. The choir entertained the passersby as did the street performers.

Once the sun goes down which is quite early it gets very cold but the market comes to life.

Bissendorf, Wedemark, Germany

From Amersfort in the Netherlands we caught a warm intercity train to Hanover and then north to our friends Ilona and Reinhard and their two girls Eleni and Stella.

We met Ilona and Reinhard while they were traveling in New Zealand in 1995 and our friends, from Arnsberg, Germany, that we met in Mexico in 1981, suggested they look us up while traveling through.

We drove one afternoon to Hanover to look at the city all decorated for the Christmas season. We spent sometime at the Christmas market in the town square and ate schmalzer kuche- a deep fried sweet dough sprinkled with icing sugar.

Stella, John, Eleni and Lil

There were many small wooden cabins decorated with fir trees and Christmas decorations. They sold, mulled wine, ginger cakes, jewelery and all sorts of wooden toys. The little children were riding on the merry-go-round and small train.

Hanover is in Lower Saxony which is the home to Volkswagen.

We visited the Town Hall (Rathaus) and saw some models of the city of Hanover from its early medieval days, to what it looked like when it was bombed in the second World War and as it looks today.

Ilona and Reinhard live in a small rural village and we have enjoyed getting some exercise walking around the forest nearby. Ilona is busy everyday helping her mother who lives nearby, care for her bedridden father. She also keeps an eye on her mother-in-law who lives a short walk up the street and doesn't drive. Like all mums she is kept busy with the household chores and the children's activities but also teaches English at a local kindergarten and primary school a few times a week. Reinhard works for Philips managing the installation of MRI machines and other medical equipment so he is often away during the week. It is a busy household.

Reinhard sings in a choir so we attended one of their performances in the local church. The choirmaster is an American and all the songs were English Christmas songs. Even though we were at the church early it was almost full with locals keen to hear the choir.

Reinhard is second last on the right

Gouda, The Netherlands

After a short train ride we arrived in Gouda. We were met by George whom we had met in The Philippines. He loves to travel and works in real estate and keeps busy diving, playing the guitar, and speed skating on ice. He was very kind to let us hang out in place. The first night we arrived was Sinta Klaas day and he had to dress up as Black Pieter and visit his family and it is traditional to exchange presents on December 6th, so he headed off to do that while we looked around the canals where he lives. Usually Sinta Klaas is celebrated for young children.

Gouda is famous for its cheese so we were able to eat a lot of that.

George took us for a drive to Leiden, Rembrandt's birthplace and a centre for medical research. While there we visited the Corpus exhibition. The building has a 35 metre high human structure and you enter his or her kneee and take a tour through the body coming out in the brain. There are lots of interactive displays to while away the time on each floor on your way down.

It gets dark so early here so by the time we got to Scheveningen, the main beach at Den Haag, it was starting to get dark. There were still people walking on the beach and along the pier with their children and dogs even as the sun was setting. The area is wall to wall hotels and the uglymodern apartments overshadow the old beautiful original buildings like this one. 9 million visitors come here each year.

We drove by the International Court of Justice and thought of Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested in Belgrade while we were there, facing the lawyers here. The Hague is the Dutch seat of government while Amsterdam is the capital. Even at night the Parliament buidings were also impressive.

A short drive away and we were in Rotterdam where George wanted to take us to the Euromast tower to see the lights of the city but it was fully booked for a function so we were not able to go up the tower. Maybe the recession has not hit the Netherlands yet. Rotterdam is Europe's largest port and the city was bombed flat in World War 2.

We then went onto have an absolutely delicious meal at the Hotel New York . It was the former headquarters of the Holland-America passenger shipping line.

While George was working we walked about the old city. Gouda is famous for cheese and smoking pipes. The 15th century town hall in the marketplace was well preserved and still in use.

The Waag, or weigh station was where goods were weighed and then taxes charged. It is now an historic building.

The area around Gouda is mostly peat and bog. The land that has been drained has many drainage canals intersecting the pastureland (they are also shown on the maps). The canals also serve as 'fences' for the grazing sheep. George said he hasn't been able to skate on the canals since 1996 (it hasn't been cold enough to freeze the deep water) but when they do freeze over he skates a 300km circuit through 11 villages. Along the route farmers sell hot drinks and soup to all the skaters. It would have been so nice to be able to try this but other than a few snow flurries it did not freeze.

Utrecht, The Netherlands

From Amsterdam we took a fast train to Utrecht where we were met by Ad. We first met Ad and his son at Halong Bay in Vietnam.

Utrecht is one of the Netherland's oldest cities. We arrived at the railway station and it is a part of the Hoog Catharijine shopping centre and is ginormous!

Ad lives in a family house in a lovely quiet street near to Utrecht and we were able to walk into the city centre easily. He is now retired from the marines but works part time as a counsellor.

The city was decorated with Christmas lights and we saw Black Pieter handing out sweets to the children. If the children are naughty they say he will take them to Spain in his sack.



We walked around the city and saw the 13th century canal wharves which are below street level. Like Amsterdam, the city gets older and older the closer you walk to the centre. Ad also pointed out the house boats that are floating brothels in the canal Red Light District. There are 40,000 students in the city making it the Netherland's largest student community.

There were many places called "food in the wall'' shops where you put money in the slot and get a hamburger or hot sandwich.


We had some wonderful Dutch dishes cooked by Ad; witloof and ham, tongue fish, as well as smoked sausage and pickled cabbage.

We haven't seen as many traditional windmills as we thought we would but this one in Utrecht had been used to mill timber at one time.

We took a trip to Batavia Haven and on the way passed dozens and dozens of wind generators. At the harbour there were several wooden tall ships and a yard where they were making new tall ships and training the next generation in the craft.

Further on from Batvia was a lovely small town called Elburg where we walked about the old city inside the rectangular city walls.

Ad bought some delicious Dutch cakes so we could celebrate John's sixty first birthday.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Outside the window at Frankie's place.


While Frankie and Anne-Laure worked we wandered around Amsterdam. It took a bit of getting used to, walking the streets as it is not always easy to see where the bicycles and scooters are supposed to travel and where the pedestrians are supposed to walk!



There are so many varieties of bicycles everywhere. The Dutch are far more creative with their bicycles than the Chinese. They carry children on the front as well as on the back of bikes and also have various bits added at the front or back to seat everyone or to carry things. The younguns like to decorate their parcel carriers with plastic flowers. I'm sure it makes it easier to spot your bike in a park of thousands.



We visited the Van Gogh museum and were given a tip to arrive between 11 and 1 to avoid the tours so we were lucky enough to have a relaxed look at everything.



There is a lot of rebuilding of footpaths going on at present so it was quite an obstacle course to find our way.



We enjoyed drinking the delicious hot chocolate in the cafes when we needed warming up. The shops are full of decorations for Sinta Klaas. This is the Saint who comes on December 5th to the children. He has helpers who are black and they accompany him on his rounds. There are two versions of why they are black. One is that they got covered in soot from climbing down the chimney into the houses and the other was because they represent the Spanish who were enemies of the Dutch and they would take the bad children back to Spain with them. Traditionally a book was kept of good and bad children so he knew who would get a gift and who would get their shoes filled with twigs instead.



We have not heard Christmas music played in the stores like we would at this time of the year in NZ!



The leaves have blown off the trees in the streets and it all looks rather bleak now.



It was interesting to see the houses in the old part of the city with their hooks to help hoist furniture to the floors above and then put them in through the windows rather than carry them up so many narrow stairs. When you hire a furniture removal van you get a pulley and a net to help move the furniture. It sure saves a lot of stair climbing.



Some of the houses with their narrow stairs that go in all directions. I could barely fit my size 10 shoes on the step.





One day we also visited the Rijks museum with its collections of paintings from the old Dutch masters. There was also an exhibition of a human skull that Damien Hirst had covered with diamonds. The skull was from someone in the 1800s and when he told his mother what he was doing to the skull she responded in shock with "For the love of God!" Now the exhibition is titled that.



In the evening we drove by the famous Red Light District. Prostitution was legalised in 1815 while brothels weren't until 2000. The ladies sit in front of the windows to attract customers. About 5% of the ladies are Dutch and there are about 1000 to 1200 working 380 windows each day. They have to pay between 80 to 100 Euro per day for the window. The shops are closed on Mondays so this is the most popular time for the Dutch customers. Of all the international clientele, the British make up 50%.

Pimping is illegal in The Netherlands and all the ladies pay taxes and have their own unions.

In the local paers and on TV we saw reports that the government wants to reduce the number of prostitutes and to reduce the number of coffee shops that sell marijuana. We went by some of the coffee shops and they looked really sleazy. Cafes are like bars where you can have coffee but coffee shops are where you have marijuana and beer.

Gulden Belofte - Golden Promise, Monnickendam, The Netherlands.

After a few days in France we returned to Alan and Helen Smith's place in Balcombe, Sussex and said our goodbyes. We look forward to them visiting us in NZ and returning the favours they have done for us.



To finish off our time in UK we spent a few days with Lil's sister Annabelle and her partner Mark Thompson. They were busy during the daytime so we were able to help with the household chores and cook some evening meals. We picked up John's new New Zealand passport and so we shouldn't have any more problems at border crossings.



Behind the New Zealand Consulate is a shop that sells all sorts of new Zealand foods, clothes and souvenirs. We bought a few items that we could easily carry and will give them to friends that we are going to visit in Europe. We have realised that we didn't get any photos of the Thompson clan. Sorry about that.

We managed to catch up with Xie whom we first met on the Thailand- Laos border. We saw her again in Shanghai and now she is studying in London so we were able to catch up once more. We wish her well in her business studies.

We both left the UK with sore throats and runny noses to go to our first winter in 20 months!

We caught a train from Liverpool station to the ferry at Harwich. The train was late so we were taken by taxi to the ferry. It was a calm crossing and we were able to get our train to Amsterdam easily. Friday evening in rush hour was not the best time to take a train with full backpacks!



We met our friend Frankie at Amsterdam South Station where he lives across the street from the station. We first met him in the Philippines where he had been diving and we stayed in the same resort together. Frankie has an interesting Dutch/Australian accent when he speaks English as he lived and worked in Australia for some time.



Frankie now works for the Happy Home Company which is a company that organizes holiday homes in several countries. He is also a scuba diving instructor and a qualified panel beater and likes to restore cars.



We were invited out to go on an old (1911) cargo carrying ship that has been restored. The ship used to carry sand and goods along the canals and now takes passengers sailing in the Ijsselmeer. The sea is an area inside a dyke system that helps protect Holland from flooding.

It was a cold miserable day so we put on all the warm clothes that we have and managed to stay warm and dry. The skipper gave us some herbal alcoholic drink to help warm us up. Frankie's flatmate Anne-Laure from France and her friend also joined us.
Frankie, Auraly, Anne-laurer, Lil

We had to help set up the sails and then sailed through the sweet water bay. The water was originally salty but the dyke fills with fresh water from the land. From the ship we could see only the rooves of the houses visible above the dykes.

We were served traditional Dutch food: bean soup with smoked sausage, cheeses, and speculaas (ginger biscuits).

Monnickendam is an interesting place. It has narrow streets and houses that look like they will fall down any day soon as they are built on such boggy land.

On a beautiful day with all its sails, the Golden promise ( Gulden Beloft) would look like this!